The average COVID-19 fatality is two years older than Joe Biden. Those folks are not just statistically old; they’re also so statistically rare, you’d need an average of more than 500 family members to have one who died from it. So why has the world gone nuts over it? In a word, media. In two words, social media.
Social media thrives on attention, death is a big deal, and COVID-19 as a cause of death has become a flashpoint issue. So although you need an average of 500 relatives to have one die from it, you only need a few acquaintances on social media to find someone who KNOWS someone who died from it. The same is true of media in general, which makes money by amplifying anecdotes into alarm. If it bleeds, it leads.
Therefore, since most don’t have an interest in looking up actual numbers, they trade tales, trust in bureaucratic/media messaging and naturally think the sky is falling. This is especially true of younger folks who are tightly connected to media, and for whom conformity is paramount. A self-destructive, intrusive, wasteful monkey wrench has been jammed into the workings of pretty much the entire world. Except Sweden.
Sweden chose the path of freedom instead, and the stats are easy to find: 38 countries have had worse per capita fatalities than “reckless” Sweden, including the U.K., France and the U.S. Yet our cramdown madness continues, because for a significant subset of the population, the anecdote-based, media-driven impulse to “do something” means more than measurable results, reasoned analysis or self-consistency.
Perhaps it’s time to wake up, look it up, and most importantly grow up instead.
Rob Kerchner
Valencia